


love is anywhere you're bound to be

by ImpishTubist



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-01 02:30:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20250694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpishTubist/pseuds/ImpishTubist
Summary: Crowley cast him a sidelong glance. "You're hardly one to talk about torrid love affairs, Mr. Shacked-Up-With-Oscar-Wilde-For-Twenty-Years."





	love is anywhere you're bound to be

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Queen’s “Funny How Love Is.”
> 
> There's discussion of fictional characters being involved with real life people in this, so if that's not your thing, probably best to dip out now. Takes place in the same universe as [I Try And Mend The Broken Pieces](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20203666) but it isn't necessary to read that first, or at all.

Dinner wasn’t as much of a disaster as Crowley had feared it might be. Since last year’s Armageddon 2.0, Warlock and Adam had gone from trying to kill one another--literally--to exchanging the occasional polite text. But tonight was the first time in months that the two boys would be in the same room together, and there had been no telling how it would go. Crowley had been hoping that, if nothing else, they wouldn't blow up the Ritz (he was rather fond of the place, after all). A low bar, but thankfully they sailed over it beautifully. All of their bickering seemed half-hearted at best, and they weathered Aziraphale’s fussing over presents by exchanging knowing looks. 

“I get to choose the music,” Adam announced as soon as they were in the car to go home.

“_Do _you, now?” Crowley asked as he pulled away from the kerb and into traffic. With the boys in the car, he kept his driving to a conservative twenty miles per hour over the speed limit. He’d magic them to Tadfield as soon as they were out of London, but he could never pass up the opportunity to speed through the city. “And how do you figure that?”

“It’s my birthday.” 

“It’s my birthday, too, dumbass,” Warlock said, but there wasn’t much bite to his voice. He sounded more amused than anything else.

“Uncle Az, can I choose the music?”

“Of course, dear boy,” Aziraphale said readily, handing Adam the stack of CDs.

“No one uses _ CDs _anymore, Uncle Tony,” Adam said, gleefully sifting through the stack. “Don’t you have Spotify on your phone?” 

“Just doing my part to add more non-biodegradable trash to the landfills,” Crowley said cheerfully. “Do you have any idea how long it takes CDs to decompose?”

“Here.” Adam handed his selection to Aziraphale. “That one, please.” 

Crowley glanced at it as Aziraphale popped it into the player and said, “I don’t think you’re going to want that one.” 

“Why not?”

Crowley’s answer was cut off by the start of “Killer Queen.” 

Adam frowned. "But--I thought that was Velvet Underground."

"It _ was_. It's been in the car for more than a fortnight." Catching Adam's puzzled glance in the mirror, Crowley added, "Every CD left in here for more than a fortnight turns into a Queen album." 

"Why?"

"The Bentley has a fondness for Freddie," Aziraphale said, sounding rather fond himself. He turned around and said, "They were shagging, you know." 

Warlock blinked at him, nonplussed. "The Bentley and Freddie Mercury?" 

"Goodness, no! I meant Crowley. Quite the torrid affair." 

"You did _ what_?" Crowley couldn't tell if Warlock sounded aghast or elated, or both. "With Freddie Mercury!" 

"It was _ one _ summer, angel," Crowley said in exasperation. "Hardly long enough to even be called an _ affair_." 

"More like a year, dear, and I don't think the car's ever forgiven you for breaking it off." 

"Never really forgave myself either, to be honest." Crowley cast him a sidelong glance. "And you're hardly one to talk about torrid love affairs, Mr. Shacked-Up-With-Oscar-Wilde-For-Twenty-Years." 

“_What _?” Adam and Warlock chorused.

“Yeah, surprise, the angel’s always been drawn to literary types,” Crowley said. He rolled his eyes, but of course no one saw behind the sunglasses.

“Oh, you’d have liked him,” Aziraphale said, laying a hand on Crowley’s arm. “It’s too bad you spent most of that century asleep.”

“I can’t believe I missed you dancing the _ gavotte_.” 

“Who else?” Adam demanded, leaning forward. “Anyone else we know?”

“Goodness, I suppose so.” Aziraphale thought for a moment. “Well, Crowley had a sweet little affair with Leonardo--”

“_ Da Vinci _?”

“--and I was with Leonard Berstein for a few years, and then there was--”

“You know what, never mind,” Warlock said. “I don’t actually need to know about my godfathers’ sex lives.” 

“Oh, but there was so much more to it than sex, dear boy,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley smirked at the note of teasing in his voice. “Though that was nice, too, of course. You know, Lord Byron could do some _ incredible _things with his tongue. Incredible for a human, I mean. Crowley’s tongue, on the other hand--”

“_Stop _!” Both boys sounded horrified. Crowley nearly choked on his laughter. 

They dropped Adam off in Tadfield, and with a flick of his hand, Crowley transported the Bentley back to the South Downs. By the time they pulled up to the cottage, Warlock was slumped against the window and half asleep. 

“Come on, my little hellspawn.” Crowley gently shook him awake. “We’re home.” 

Sixteen years old, he thought as Warlock unfolded his gangly body from the car and stumbled up to the cottage. How could that be, when just the other day Mrs Dowling had introduced him to his new charge by handing him a red-faced and squalling infant? 

He had lived for so long. Time passed too quickly.

****

Crowley didn’t feel much like sleeping tonight, not with the recently-stirred memories bouncing around his head. He spent some time misting his plants with menace while Aziraphale read, and then eventually ended up in the flat’s main room, sorting through his record collection. He hadn’t listened to any of them in...twenty years, probably. Hell had liked to hijack his speakers at random to send him threatening messages--he’d never known if he was going to get Freddie’s voice or Hastur's whenever he put on a record, and eventually the stress of not knowing hadn’t made it worth it. 

He picked up an album at random, slid the record out of its sleeve, and placed it on the turntable. He closed his eyes as the first notes tumbled out of the speakers, letting the music wash over him in waves.

“He ever write any songs about you?” 

Crowley looked up to see Warlock lingering in the doorway. Dressed in his pajamas, his hair rumpled, he looked just like the seven-year-old Crowley had to beg and wheedle and cajole to go to bed on time each night. He had never lost that restlessness, not in the years since.

“A demon never kisses and tells,” Crowley said, as Freddie crooned _ funny how love came tumbling down with Adam and Eve_. “Thought you were sleeping.” 

“Did you love him?” Warlock crossed the room and sat down cross-legged next to Crowley and the pile of albums.

Crowley brushed his fingers over the album he still held, lingering for a moment on Freddie’s face, then set it aside. “Yes, I did.” 

“Why?”

“He was…” Crowley trailed off. How could he even put it into words? It _ had _been a whirlwind, dizzying and raw and sublime. The whole thing felt like a fever dream, one he’d never wanted to wake up from. “He was Freddie.” 

“No, I mean...he was human. Mortal. Why’d you even bother, knowing that he would…” Warlock trailed off.

“Impermanence is what makes it precious,” Crowley said. “It’s tragic, but it’s worth it.” 

“Were there others?”

“Oh, yes.” Not all of them famous, either. Some of his lovers had names that humans would remember for centuries; others had been as anonymous as he was. “You don’t live among humans for six thousand years without getting to know some of them.” 

“Is that what they’re calling it these days,” Warlock muttered, and Crowley swatted playfully at him. “Brother Francis doesn’t care?”

“Why should he? He had his own loves.”

“Did you love them the way you love him?”

Crowley shook his head. “You can’t go around comparing them to each other. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love Aziraphale, and I don’t love him the way I loved any of the others."

He put his left wing around Warlock, tugging him closer. Warlock leaned against him. How refreshing it was, to have someone other than Aziraphale know who--what--he was. Someone he didn't have to keep his wings hidden around, someone whose life he didn't have to make a quiet exit from before they realized that he never aged.

He quickly clamped down on that thought before it could run its course to its natural conclusion. There were things that Anthony J Crowley avoided like the plague, thoughts he refused to let out of the lockbox in the corner of his mind, and his godsons’ mortality was chief among them. Mayflies, humans were. Their lives were so fleeting, and yet the marks they left on him were indelible. Warlock was special, in so many ways, but even he wasn't immune to the slow march of time.

Warlock rested his head on Crowley’s shoulder. “Thanks for dinner, Nanny. It was great.” 

“Everything’s great compared to the fiasco that was your eleventh birthday,” Crowley said with a huff, and Warlock snorted. 

“Nah, even that was fun.” Warlock picked at a thread on his sleeve and added quietly, “At least you guys cared. Meant a lot, when I was little. You two making a fuss over my birthday, because no one else ever did.” 

The old anger flared bright in his chest, and then faded just as quickly, leaving behind only a dull ache. It didn’t matter. No sense in getting angry over things he couldn’t change. What was done was done, and Warlock was _ his _now. 

“Get used to it, because we’re going to spend the rest of your life making a fuss over you.” He kissed Warlock’s cheek sloppily, like Nanny had when he was a baby, and Warlock let out a very un-teenagerlike giggle.

“You’re not a very good demon, Nanny, did you know that?” Warlock made a show of wiping his cheek with his sleeve.

“I’m an _ excellent _demon, little hellspawn. Just not when it comes to you.” Crowley flexed his wings and tapped Warlock’s shoulder with one. “Now off to bed with you. Aziraphale wants to go to the seaside in the morning, and you know how he gets if we’re late.” 

Warlock padded off to his room. Crowley gathered the records and put them away, though he left the one on the turntable, volume turned low.

“And to think, Gabriel once called _ me _soft.” Aziraphale came into the room, holding two mugs. “Cocoa, dear?”

“Thanks, angel.” 

The mug was warm in his hands, and Aziraphale radiated heat. Their wings brushed; Crowley shivered and leaned into the touch.

“He _ does _ have a lovely voice, doesn’t he?” Aziraphale mused as the record played on. “I’ve always found it remarkable, what humans can do with the minuscule amount of time they have on this planet. The impact they leave behind.”

“Some of them, anyway,” Crowley said. Countless others would be lost to time, with no one to remember even their names.

“That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” Aziraphale settled his fingers on Crowley’s chest, over his heart. “We bear witness. We remember. We love them. They _ change _us, and we carry them with us through the centuries. He will be part of you always, you know. He won't be forgotten.”

"Oh, I doubt humanity's going to forget him anytime soon."

"I wasn't talking about Freddie," Aziraphale said quietly.

Crowley nodded, throat abruptly too tight for speech. He curled a hand around Aziraphale’s where it rested on his chest. Funny thing, love. Gentle and cruel all at once. It had caused him so much pain over the centuries, _would _cause him more pain, and yet he kept falling into it, over and over and _ over _again. The years passed and the memories piled up, higher and higher until he thought he might collapse under their weight.

At least this time when he fell, he would have an angel there to catch him.

**Author's Note:**

>   
All I wanted was to write a fic about Crowley and Freddie Mercury banging and instead I got...this.  
  
This falls into a larger, post-canon universe that I’m working on that involves Warlock going to live with Crowley and Aziraphale (FOR REASONS), but I think it makes sense without that context. Written because I need more fics where Aziraphale and/or Crowley had past lovers who were humans and neither of them begrudges the other for it or gets jealous about it because it’s possible to love more than one person in your lifetime! Imagine that!  
  
Come find me on [Tumblr](https://impishtubist.tumblr.com/) and shout at me to finish all my WIPs.  



End file.
